


leonine

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hair, Just an exercise in something nice and calming and sensory, Pen and Ink, gordon's just got really gorgeous hair, look - Freeform, not-smut, physical affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7363846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penelope and Gordon, fluffity fluffy fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leonine

He doesn’t need her to do this.

She volunteers.

And it’s an intimate thing, anyway, it’s the sort of thing one’s girlfriend could do. Should do, conceivably. So the week after they’d gotten serious— _actually_ serious, actually in the terms of “so I guess I think I love you, is that gonna be okay?” type serious—she’d gone and had the Manor’s pool redone. Clad the whole thing in gleaming, cream coloured marble, had a whirlpool put in, a sauna, planted palms in planters all around the pool house, so it’d feel a bit like home.

_Why_ , she’d protested, all guiltless innocence when he’d balked at the degree of the expense, solely for his sake, _it simply wouldn’t do for you to miss your morning swim just because I couldn’t do without the pleasure of your company. And who’s to say I don’t enjoy a few laps of the pool myself, Gordon Tracy?_

She does, but especially when he’s the one swimming them and she can sit herself comfortably on the heated tiles and trail her fingers through the water, in a kaftan over a tasteful one-piece, waiting for him to get done.

So mid-morning, post swim, and isn’t the whirlpool just the loveliest place for those taut, tender muscles, all afire with lactic acid and spent endurance. Parked beside and above him once again, dangling her legs in the water while he rests his arms up along the top, the curve of his forearm oh-so-absently around the curve of her buttocks.

And teasing her fingertips through that golden blond hair, lightly, just so very lightly. He’s got terrible split ends, the absolute worst, and goes far too long between haircuts, so that they fray and fluff and make his hair into a damp thicket that traps water at its roots and just refuses to get all the way dry. Still, she won’t comment, because he’s heard it all before, and she’s just waiting for him to be loosened up and limber and ready to haul himself back out of the water, and—

She’ll drag him upstairs, park _him_ in the chair in her own private bathroom, scooted right up to the counter, so she can perch atop it. And then she’ll have nowhere else to put her legs but draped over his shoulders, and he’ll threaten to stand up and take her charging through the house, and feeling the muscles of his back beneath her thighs, she knows perfectly well he could do so, and easily. Another time.

Because _now_ she gets to warm up a palmful of jojoba oil, and just bury her hands up to the wrists in that thick, _gorgeous_ blond hair.

“ _Ow_ , Pen,” he protests, because on that initial thrust she can never quite seem to be gentle, always needs to grab two big handfuls up from the roots, rough and possessive and eager.

“Sorry, dearest,” she murmurs, and presses her palms against his scalp, working her fingers through matted curls, hair so coarse from chlorine and salt that it’s probably mostly waterproof by now.

She makes remarks about lions, her fingertips working snarls and tangles out of leonine gold hair, as she is. About how male lions are _mostly_ useless, and it’s the lionesses who do all the _real_ work, all the hunting and cub-rearing and important liony business. That the males mostly lie around in the sun, being lazy and indolent and really just dreadfully shiftless, _actually_.

He only tips his head back into her lap and grins up at her, leaves light smears of oil on the skin of her thighs. She flicks his nose with a fingertip and then kisses the broken bridge of it, returns to her task.

Her own hair is soft and smooth, fine, pale gold. It falls between his fingers like water, as often as he likes to run his hands through it, pulling the weight of it off her shoulders and letting it drop. As much as she loves this, all the pleasurable shivering it sends down her spine, Penelope’s fairly certain that she gains a great deal more enjoyment from playing with Gordon’s hair than he does from playing with hers.

Because she can ruffle her fingers through Gordon’s hair, fluff up those feathery ends; or fill her pressed together palms with his curls, rough and cowlicked with moisture. Or massage oil deep into the roots, and then get to work, with the balls of her fingertips working points of pressure against his scalp, and then her fingernails dragging light, gentle furrows from his hairline all the way down to the fuzzy nape of his neck, til he shivers and she squeezes her knees against his cheeks.

There’s a broad toothed comb on the counter beside her, but she won’t use it. Preferable to use her fingers, even past the point of having accomplished her task. Unsolicited, one of Gordon’s hands will usually catch the back of one of her calves and warm, calloused palms will go skimming down the smooth surface of her skin, until his fingertips curl around her ankle and he starts to rub one of her feet—this is unfair, and tantamount to an act of war, in the theater of intimate gestures.

Really it’s a game of chicken, played with making each other feel good; feel loved and touched and cherished and appreciated. Sometimes they’ll talk, but most times they won’t. Sometimes it seems like words would spoil it, would add busyness into such acts of mutual leisure, these lazy mornings together. Together, in these all too infrequent mornings, they’re both just waiting for Penelope’s compact or Gordon’s wristcomm—neither are ever far from hand—to chime or ping, summon one or both of them to the other side of the world.

When it happens, whenever it happens, that work pulls one or both of them away, Penelope’s hands will always wend their way into his hair, when Gordon has to kiss her goodbye. They’ll always cling for a moment, she’ll always be that little bit rough, possessive, the same way at the last touch as she is at the first.

He’s never asked her to do this. She never intends to stop.


End file.
